Outside The Beltway: James Joyner- 'California Must Release 40,000 Prisoners'

Source:The New York Times- California prison over crowding.

"Citing the 8th Amendment prohibition on cruel and usual punishment, the U.S. Supreme court has upheld an order for California to release 38,000 to 46,000 prisoners from its overcrowded jails." 

From Outside The Beltway

America as a country as well as its fifty States is essentially broke and to compound these problems we have overcrowded prisons across the country where we have to support these inmates out of general revenue taxpayer money. Prisons don't pay for themselves and inmates hardly pay for anything as far as taking care of themselves. Almost everything they receive in prison is subsidized by the state. (Meaning taxpayers)

To compound that problem, we have 2 million inmates in America and hundreds of thousands of these inmates are non-violent offenders and a lot of these offenders are drug offenders, meaning users, so we have a three layer problem with our corrections system. A bad economy with shrinking state revenue and overcrowded prisons which is also partially but not completely the fault of the state. 

A large part of that is also personal responsibility (or the lack of it) not finishing school having kids too soon. But government is at fault as well, because we have too many as what Classical Liberal Economist Milton Friedman called "Bad Laws". We arrest to many people and send them to prison for crimes that aren't a big threat to society. Crimes and I'm thinking of marijuana, prostitution, and gambling, where we would be better off regulating these activities instead. 

We don't handle our other non-violent offenders that opposed some threat to society and need to be dealt with very well. Like petty thieves (to use as an example) and we send them to prison for long sentences. Where we would be better off sending those people to county jail, halfway houses or supervised probation, where they can pay their debt to society but where they are also contributing to society as well. doing community service, working paying for their room and board, etc. and staying out of trouble to stay out of prison. So we save our very limited prison space for the people who need to occupy it our actual dangerous criminals. 

And the other problem that we have is that we don't prepare our inmates that we release to a large degree for life on the outside and then wonder why they commit other crimes and come back to prison. For example releasing long-term inmates from prison straight from solitary confinement after being in solitary confinement for long stretches. And thats just one example. 

Governor Jerry Brown of California understands these problems because he's the Governor of a state with the largest prison population in America. And with the largest public debt and deficit of any state in America, as well as being the former Attorney General of California as well. Which is why he set up a new program that releases non-violent offenders from prison. And sends them to halfway houses and supervised probation instead. Non-violent Offenders with good prison records that it and I wish him and his state the best.